Page 27
“Who is it?” Jerome’s question was a quiet murmur.
“Ambrose Ashe.” Solomon widened his stance. “Sutcliffe’s man.”
“Solomon Harriot.” The man’s gaze landed on them, and he walked forward with a jaunty strut.
The two men stared at each other, and Gabriella could see there was no love lost between them.
Solomon’s girlfriend Catherine appeared from behind the kitchen door, and began to make her way across the dining room toward them, as if she sensed trouble.
“What’re you doing here, Ashe?” Solomon asked. “The problem we need sorting is at the house.”
“Mr. Sutcliffe sent me to find out what’s the big emergency.” Ambrose Ashe didn’t drop his stare. “Mr. Sutcliffe says you’re blowing up his phone.”
The problem with trying to intimidate someone was you had to pick your victim, Gabriella reflected. Because Solomon was just as physically strong as Ashe, and didn’t seem inclined to be intimidated.
“Is that so?” Solomon asked, and eventually Ashe looked away.
Catherine stopped a few tables back when it was clear who was in control here, but she didn’t go back to the kitchen.
“My uncle can’t get in the front door of the house,” Solomon said. “The gutters have fallen off the roof, and water is leaking everywhere. That’s the big emergency.”
Ashe gave a low laugh. “Sorry to burst your bubble, man, but that’s not an emergency to Mr. Sutcliffe. Your roof hasn’t come down, has it?”
“My uncle’s roof,” Solomon corrected. “And that’s just about the only thing that hasn’t happened.”
“Well, it could always be worse,” Ambrose Ashe said, and the way he said it was clearly a threat. “Cut back on the annoying calls, and Mr. Sutcliffe might forget this ever happened.”
Ashe turned and walked out of the club with the same strut.
“Sell-out,” someone called to him, and he stopped dead just before he reached the door. He turned back around, and Gabriella could see his face was spookily blank, his eyes dead.
“Who said that?” he asked softly. When no one answered he straightened up. “Who said that?”
His shout made Gabriella jerk in surprise.
“If it isn’t true, why’re you so upset?” Solomon asked. “You’re helping someone oppress your fellow West Indians. You’re from Antigua, aren’t you?”
Ashe leaped forward at Solomon, trying to get in a blow, and Solomon met him straight on, punched him in the gut, and then Melvin and George, Solomon’s unofficial henchmen, were suddenly there, gripping Ashe’s arms.
Ashe looked like he was coming out of a daze, looking around him and blinking like he didn’t quite know how he’d gotten into the situation.
“Tell Mr. Sutcliffe he needs to fix the house, or we’ll start fixing it ourselves and taking the repair money out of the rent.” Solomon flicked his hand and George and Melvin dragged Ashe out and tossed him into the street.
“That won’t end well,” Mr. Rodney said, and Gabriella could hear the trepidation in his voice.
Catherine stepped up and put a hand on Solomon’s arm. “That man’s not right in the head.”
“No, he’s on such a fine hair trigger, I’m surprised he hasn’t landed himself in jail already,” Solomon agreed. “But no one disses me in my own place and backing down would have gotten us nowhere.”
That was also true, but Gabriella had a bad feeling Mr. Sutcliffe and Ambrose Ashe were not men that responded well to having their authority challenged. And unfortunately, she and the rest of the residents of the house were caught in the middle.
George and Solomon walked her, Mr. Rodney and Jerome home.
Neither said it was because they thought Ambrose Ashe might attack them out of spite, but Gabriella thought that was likely.
She didn’t like the way things had escalated, but if Mr. Sutcliffe was a dodgy landlord with a standover man like Ambrose Ashe on his books, he’d picked the wrong person to bully. Solomon Harriot was not just a worker at British Rail.
Gabriella knew he owned a grocery store that carried West Indian supplies, and she also suspected he was involved in some illegal activities. George and Melvin might have day jobs themselves, George at British Rail along with Solomon, and Melvin as a bouncer for a popular night club, but the men were also Solomon’s lieutenants, and Jerome was involved, too.
